The story of a ghost

SUMMARY

This paper considers the nature of ghosts from an analytical perspective, drawing from clinical work and also from Fairbairn's ideas on internalisation. Ghosts can be seen as a manifestation of the return of the dissociated parts of the self. Their origins lie in the response to early traumatic experience where the separateness of self and object is denied. Ghosts can be laid to rest through a process of separation, re-integration and re-attribution, a process which reflects a move from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position.